Pray

fold the paper
fold the hands

Reporter in Baghdad
her deadline
is past.

Inmates, Kabuli,
have captured
Block Two.

Paris has kidnapped
and murdered
the Jew.

Sunni jihadis
have tortured
the mosque.

US extremities,
innocence,
lost.

fold the paper
fold the hands

pray

Macon's lament

George Will says conservatives are happier than liberals (he's got research to back him on this) because conservatives

acknowledge the Law of Unintended Consequences, which is: The unintended consequences of bold government undertakings are apt to be larger than, and contrary to, the intended ones.

Conservatives take comfort in this. Meanwhile, conscientious liberals deprive themselves of the simplest delights, even automotive ones, because

there is global warming to worry about, and the perils of corporate-driven consumerism, which is the handmaiden of bourgeoisie materialism. And high-powered cars (how many liberals drive Corvettes?) are metaphors (for America's reckless foreign policy, for machismo rampant, etc.). And then there is -- was -- all that rustic beauty paved over for highways. (And for those giant parking lots at exurban mega-churches. The less said about them the better.) And automobiles discourage the egalitarian enjoyment of mass transit. And automobiles, by facilitating suburban sprawl, deny sprawl's victims -- that word must make an appearance in liberal laments; and lament is what liberals do -- the uplifting communitarian experience of high-density living.

Will calls Liberalism

...a grim and scolding creed. And not one conducive to happiness.

Recently, foreign oil workers got caught up in bold government undertakings:

Macon Hawkins, who was one of nine men seized by heavily armed militants in the restive Niger River Delta a week ago, told reporters yesterday that U.S. President George W. Bush and the United Nations need to help resolve the standoff between oil companies and the people of the impoverished region.

"They get nothing out of the oil, and they produce all of the oil," Hawkins said as he sat on a small boat among hooded young men armed with machine guns and one rocket-propelled grenade launcher. "They're tired of it, so they're going to fight, and they're going to fight until death."

Despite his captivity, Hawkins appeared to be in good spirits:

Hawkins, who said he was from a small town in Texas, said he would turn 69 on March 1. Asked what he wanted for his birthday, he replied "freedom," and laughed heartily.

Hawkins' hearty laugh would seem to pose a conundrum to George Will's happiness theory. On the one hand, the Texas oil worker has a firm grasp on the consequences of bold government undertakings. On the other, despite his consequent capture, the man is laughing heartily. Both hands place him squarely in the conservative boat.

But then there's Mr. Hawkins' comment about giving Nigerians a piece of the action before they demand it, to the death. This is sounding more like the automotively conservative liberal lament, affability notwithstanding.

This is the beauty of research and statistics. Whether Hawkins or the Nigerians are granted independence anytime soon, they can be seen as the insignificant tail of the curve, hardly a challenge to the great Law of Unintended Consequences, flapping unperturbable on George's orwellian flagpole.

Ester's sister's wine casserole

Today I'm vacuuming -- first time in weeks. It brings me to tears. If I hadn't set out on the mindless chore, I might have forgotten Mimi, the woman I met yesterday when I told stories at Judson Park. Little kids and their moms sat on the floor, the elderly occupied couches and wheelchairs. Teddy and Kathleen could not be sure if my puppets were as intriguing as the ant colony traversing the carpet. The ants definitely got the staff's attention. Judson is a meticulously clean facility and proud of it.

While the young ones passed the cookies, I greeted the elders. That's when I met Mimi who looked as though, were she more agile, she would rather be pruning begonias. So I didn't expect her eyes, swimming behind thick glasses, to widen and shine into mine. 'So glad you could be here,' said Mimi as she must have said hundreds of times in her life, and just as true. Of course, she reminded me of my mom, who exchanged her wheelchair for wings over a year ago. The kind, quiet woman with a gentle hand in mine; I couldn't cry for Jane in the middle of the day room, though I'm sure Mimi would have understood. But here I stand the day after, wand in hand, poking at blurred lace and faded sills.

I bring this up because it's in vogue to debunk the routine. Creativity is hip, career trajectory is cool, networking on all fronts, now that's hot. Oh, really? Define exotic: excitingly different. Define different. Elaborate on exciting.

Drummer Bobby Sanabria grew up in the South Bronx. When Maestro Tito Puente showed up at Bobby's housing project with his Latin Jazz, the boy had an epiphany: here's how I will spend my life. He travels the planet, making music. Exotic? Excitingly different? Any musician will tell you, to be good enough to globe trot your music, you practice. A lot.

I have a theory. Routine's not the demon. The real challenger is choice. Every minute brings a slew of possibilities. Routine is just a choice you make to organize your day into a reasonable subset of choices lest you go mad. Kids and the elderly often have choices made for them. And we, the middle dwellers, do the best we can, sculpting our flutes from the tree of life.

So I wave my wand, make a choice, my epiphany c/o Mimi and Jane: to play the exotic instrument of graciousness every day. If I do end up being tended by strangers, as many of us shall, I plan to be so practiced in this skill that it never leaves me.

So glad you could be here. May I pour you some tea?

Burning bushes

The Institute of Medicine, federally chartered to conduct research requested by Congress, noted that service members are often exposed to prolonged loud noises -- from guns, rockets and other weapons, plus heavy-duty vehicles, planes and ships.... By comparing the hearing of those who had served in Iraq with the hearing of those who had not, researchers concluded that soldiers sent to battle zones were 52.5 times more likely to suffer auditory damage.

Ball players suffer chronic injuries. Miners get black lung; their dugout is deeper. And soldiers, if they survive, often come home to a less audible world.

As more is revealed about the selective hearing practiced by this executive branch that led soldiers to its war, I ask: can we the people tune in to reason and integrity, or are have we been permanently deafened by our leaders' raging fictions?

You say terrorism's real as coal dust, somebody's got to step up to the plate for the sake of the citizens? Terrorism is real. We are told not to question our government's motives or means in this conflict. Why? Because it is the government? If terrorists are lurking in the bushes, the best defense is prolonged loud noises -- guns, rockets and other weapons, plus heavy-duty vehicles, planes and ships of state?

You may be right about terrorism lurking in the bushes. And, just as plausibly, terrorism is the bush menagerie, perpetually aflame with black gold, imitating the gods.

Limping olympia

When that race was over, her coach Peter Foley covered his mouth with his hands and fell to the ground. Her friends and relatives stopped waving their American flags.

It had happened in 1986 when friends and relatives and the television public watched the Challenger explode. Victory roared up to an airless gasp in one millisecond of techno-phantasm, spiraling off into blue screen.

Fast forward 1.5 decades. You are living out the American dream: love conquers all and eco-military prowess conquers the agape holdouts. A co-worker murmurs in the hallway, they think we're under attack, two planes just rammed the twin towers in New York. Lips frozen mid greeting, brain torn up in impossible meanings, you follow the coach to his knees.

Lindsey Jacobellis was supposed to win the gold. For us! For all the non-snowboarding klutzes who love to stand on that top block with her, our white smiles and sculpted bodies quivering in the wind. It's a tradition by now which, Ms. Jacobellis has found, you mess with, you bring on the scorn of the masses. She has been grilled, psychoanalyzed, insulted:

Lindsey Jacobellis had gold within her reach. Instead she went for one last roar from the crowd, stupidly trying a flashy trick when all she needed to do was slide down the hill.

So say the pundits: All you needed to do, NASA geniuses, was get those O-rings seated right before blast off. All you needed to do, CIA honchos, was coordinate your vaulted intelligence with your potent mainframes. And all you had to do, Lindsay J, was slide down the hill... you robbed us of our gold with your last minute tricks, wounded us with your pride. And if there's one thing we can't stand around here, it's hubris.

Ask Jack. Ask Jill. Ask the Greeks. There's tragedy at the foot of that hill.

Delusion and grace

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us 'Universe,' a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
-- Albert Einstein

Albert, did you leave us a theorem, a formula, an equation for solving the mystery of compassion? A theology professor once told me knowledge changed behavior, using the example of grass. Ever since he learned how slowly a patch of grass regains vitality after feet press it to the ground, he could not bring himself to cut freestyle across the quad. He was a principled man, more disciplined than I or most mortals. I know or can know in a key stroke how many babies die of AIDs or malaria in the time it takes to finish this sentence...

This is the kind of discussion that makes you twitch and turn the radio to a happy song in a major key. It's more fun to enjoy life than embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty, right?

Unless you choose to explore your world. Yes, one of the most self indulgent vices turns out to be the most humane. Real art, the kind where delving is second nature and honesty can't help itself, sets you on a course of no return. At first you find out the accumulation of stuff holds no allure, except for the materials of creation. Then you notice you have nothing to say in pleasant conversations about the us and the them. You lose your ability to interpret that language. Gradually you rearrange your work and play to cram so much creativity into the horn, priorities shift. And finally? I don't know the finally, I only know I have fewer boastful, envious, competitive reactions to life when I'm bringing new songs into the world. I can't say why, but I do know this is taking me toward a wider embrace of the people, the nature of my planet.

Albert's not here to advise or dissent. Except in the artist sensibility of his bequest.

Talisman

A dream. A mountain girl in a weathered schoolhouse. She is pretty and plain of clothing and hair, unbothered by fashion, blocky of build but not ungraceful. Her teacher is a poet laureate, a Shirley Jones kind of disciplined beauty with cropped hair and regal cheeks. The dame is sure of her talent only so far as others revere it.

Two gents, white haired, patient, sit in the classroom, observing the girl. One tells the other he is captivated by her writing. Both speak of her as of the Christ in second coming. The first man is certain that, when her writing ripens, she will be a master. Her thoughts are otherworldly, her words natural as her hair, pure as her mountain skin.

There is more adventure. The young woman would rescue her kin in a helicopter over which she has ungainly control. It becomes clear she is a kangaroo! -- loping, flatfooted, tail a-thwap against the hardtack earth in her cumbersome rush to save the weak. I awaken early to this sweet image of birth and recognition, duty and innocence, torch passing and gravitas.

I often dream less hopeful. I flee the nights' calamities, I search for burning answers. I wake up spent. Is the mind a reflection of the world? Jung's collective underworld, perhaps? Is a savior coming? Is she here, evolving? Are we not as doomed as nightmares, in the mind and in the news, portend?

Stay tuned to the sub subconscious. She will lope across this dearth and save your soul.

Darrow's sorrow

Don't be my knight in shining armor.
How can I love you if you hide away?
Armor will not protect your lady
from lovers' sorrow by light of day.
-- words & music © Susan Weber

In muted awe, two small boys stare at polished exoskeletons in the museum's famed armor court. Even stallions wore protective hardware, back in the day. A helmet cannot speak, eye slits cannot weep, chain mail does not groan its stories of frustration and defeat. As agonies of labor fade away when babies slide into the brightness, these knights in shining pose survival of the fittest's bloodless testament to life.

Here is the outfit that may save your torso from extinction in the Baghdad games today:

helmet 3.5 lbs
helmet cover .2 lbs
ballistic eye wear .2 lbs
outer tactical vest 8.4 lbs
front and back protective inserts for tactical vest 10.9 lbs
side protective inserts for tactical vests 7 lbs
M-16 rifle with attachments 9 lbs
gloves .3 lbs
magazines with ammunition 13.7 lbs
pouches 1.9 lbs
knee and elbow pads 1 lb
green smoke grenades (2) 4 lbs
hydration system with water 6.3 lbs
first aid kit 1 lb
combat assault sling .4 lbs
bayonet 1.3 lbs
fragmentation grenades (2) 4 lbs
earplugs with case .1 lbs
radio 1.1 lbs

Seventy four point three pounds. How many babies could you carry to their mamas' breasts if someone said this battle's over, shed your armor plate, rejoin the living? Maybe just one, you, the knight who dare not cry so long as tournament kings have summoned curators to hold their banners high.

You don't need armor plate to
be charming in this place to
close the space between us if you choose to.
Don't be my knight in shining
Don't be my knight in shining
Don't be my knight in shining
be my knight for real.
-- words & music © Susan Weber

Banyan

When I was smaller than just about everything, I reached up for the cup on the TV. Grabbing me, my hand, the cup and (quite loudly) my attention, my mother averted a scalding and a scarring more vivid than this memory. I was astonished, as I dangled in her trembling arms, to see the cup brimmed with black coffee when just yesterday, hadn't I picked raisins out of the same cup, set on the table my Grandpa made?

'Be careful' is the prayer good parents speak to childrens' dreams and dangers. Strapping gas masks on his children as scud alarms blared, my Israeli friend said, 'the worst fear a parent can feel is not being able to protect your children.' We build our fences tall and strong around the innocent.

To err is human; even air can suffocate the child. Howard Hughes' mother warned him the typhus would take him if he strayed into the village. The only latitude she left him was up -- his safest love, the sky. He who feared the ordinary door knob engineered commercial planes for earthbound citizens, that parents might tremble anew.

What does it take for a person, or a people, to be free? There is a banyan tree on a virgin island. Its branches dangle earthward, taking root. This tree with a thousand trunks will never leave its real estate. It is worthy of a picture and a picnic in its shade. At dusk, the sun adorns it with a silver tiara. Protected by the government, it shall never be a mast or a guitar or plough or a girl's small table, holding raisins.

Brainbeats

One spring day, a coke in hand, sunglasses on my nose, I go to the zoo with second graders. Mid bus trip, my mind slips into surreal waters; children, parents, movements, sounds become more fluid. Kids lean over seats and teachers laugh at the wide highway, driver hunched and steady -- we are immersed in the opulent dance.

I have this feeling another time with a crowd of New Yorkers steaming full throttle down Broadway. Our symphony moves from light to light, beat to beat, rest to rest, with each player's unique touch on the instrument.

I wait with a sick child in the emergency room. I used to work here. Nurses and doctors buzz past each other, or stop to discuss, buzz to the next bedside or chart the night's fandango on a giant board. Or is this a team of coaches splashing game plans on the wall? When I was the suited worker, I was too invested in minutiae to feel the game unfolding.

I'm in this zone again with three artists painting images and sound on a canvas known as Crooked River Groove. We know and do this job: perform our music on a stage. Our live audience consists of engineers who document our show. Four cameras roll across the studio, the sound board hums. I find a silent grace in the TV crew's concerted movements. Their calm intensity draws me out beyond the bounds of nervousness or self-regard. Their sphere of creativity incapsulates and magnifies my own. Our host, Professor Wiggins, tells us we've done well connecting with the electrons -- a worthy phrase for all the times where time is nearly still, slow motioning the neurons in our minds to span millennia as every true performance tends to do.

Dot matrix

A woman goes to work, to school, to dentist, grocery store and church. She takes her kids to lessons, calls her parents from the waiting room or her sister from the car. On the side she's filming documentaries on the homeless, sending screenplay rewrites to an LA producer. Her husband stirs the soup and shovels snow or paints the house.

In a non flick of the keyboard, her life is changed. An email she's about to delete stops her cold. I'm watching you is the subject; she starts to read, prepared to sift through bogus hype and a link she won't pursue. Instead, the sender is uncannily acquainted with her life, noting every detail. For however long it takes to read the swimming text, she does not breathe. When a parched white rasp escapes her throat, her eyelids pinch to black denial. How long? How much? How possible? How wrong... how... wrong... how...

"We don't realize that, as we live our lives and make little choices, like buying groceries, buying on Amazon, Googling, we're leaving traces everywhere," says Lee Tien, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "We have an attitude that no one will connect all those dots. But these programs are about connecting those dots - analyzing and aggregating them - in a way that we haven't thought about."

Dive and swim

Former USA poet laureate Rita Dove recommends a regular reading workout:

When you read, you become bold, you identify with the characters, the Brothers Karamazov, you start carrying them around. Or Odysseus. Or one of the characters in Langston Hughes. A kind of inner boldness builds up.

Over half of today's library circulation, she laments, is from video rental. Coaching us to read more, watch less, she wonders if the 'passive' entertainments are like empty calories:

It's not nourishing. We're starving.

This is not good news. We're getting flabby in the fanny and between the ears? What's next to finish us off completely? Soul steroids? Psychotropic fudge busters?

Here's my un-pulitzered laureate-less recipe for health and well being. Get sweaty with a pen*. Find what's in you; dig it out. Reading builds inner boldness? That's good, but writing disciplines your boldness. And writing is not so hard, if you have the will. As Rita Dove explains:

I look out at the world as a writer, someone trying to bring everything we can't articulate into some kind of language. It deals with a lot of silence, and a lot of patience to bring those silences out.

I leave you with one last wellness tip: publicize your work; let the gimlet eye relieve you of your bombast. Shed your bluster on the mud room floor; your reader steeps the tea, awaiting you.

*a metaphor for your excavating tool of choice

Moon below the masthead

Front page and center Cleveland Plain Dealer -- odd placement for the sci fi book jacket, no? Small faces gape at a huge shimmering moon with crescent chin, sloped nose and lowered lashes. Over this photo hangs a quote:

Since the day of the operation, I have a face like everybody else.

I tear my eyes from the picture and leave for work, baffled. The full featured moon conjures up Virgin Mary's face discovered on a steelyard's rusted tankard 50 miles from no place. Devotees flock to see her.

And the caption.

Since the day of the operation, I have a face like everybody else.

Here's where the sci fi kicks in. Aliens with laser toys replace pockmarked Man in the Moon with smooth Lady Luna -- quite the operation.

The debate about intelligent design and evolution comes to mind. I wonder if both explanations of our origins will some day seem as strange as alien invasions in front page stories. What if Darwin's theories end up like some of Galileo's, eclipsed by Einstein? I revere the scientists, disciplined visionaries of matter, space and time. They forbear the nudgy matron saint of factoids, hold the world accountable to proof. They pack a spare cerebrum full of data. But surely every good professor knows she's but a footprint on the Everest.

And what explains the picture in the paper? A story of an ordinary earthling, Isabelle Dinoire, and her doctors who stitched a stranger's chin where hers had been -- and cheeks, and lips and nostrils. My moon is her projection, my aliens her surgeons, my bafflement her miracle evolving.

Degrees of freedom

Maureen Dowd met with the Saudi ambassador at his embassy across from the Watergate last week. Condoleesa Rice lives in the Watergate. There's a little grocery in her building, an escalator ride down from street level. I kept a lookout for our well-heeled Secretary of State when I was there; maybe she'd pick up a can of soup or a pork chop after a long day at the White House. She never showed. Was she eating Chinese take-out with her staff, strategizing her next global jaunt?

And the Saudi ambassador -- does he ever drop by the Watergate grocer to satisfy a chocolate craving or buy the jumbo bag of navel oranges? They're pretty good this time of year. I guess he's got underlings to do that for him.

The Saudi royal daughters are educated in DC from the safety of the Saudi royal palace. There's a basement classroom at George Washington University decked out with TV cameras for the princesses' closed circuit enlightenment. Do they ever set foot in their market in Riyadh? Are their overseas calls monitored by dear daddy and his Arabian knights? What if the daughters get a Hershey's craving? Ahh... servants, right. Halliburton likely wheels a dessert cart down the palace corridors on schedule, mocha cherry cheese cake for all. And the neighborhood Halliburton contractor? Will he be kidnapped in Baghdad today, terror's post-it note? This would garner a story by the likes of foreign correspondent Anne Garrels, if she survives the drive from airport to hotel.

Thomas Friedman says there's a bill in congress to reduce US oil consumption through the use of alternative fuels and new technology. It's supported by key Republicans and Democrats in both houses. And if, between chocolate cravings and road trips to the mega mart two streets down we can fit it in, we are urged to contact our elected reps and tell them to vote it in.

Nano soundings

A man whose fevered will is to hear music again, specifically Ravel's Boléro, turns to the miniaturization of all things digital. He has a wee computer implanted in his ear. But the notes of Boléro via his cochlear implant do not ring true, compressed within the vocal range of normal talking. The man tracks down computer wizards who tell him his tiny computer's hardware can handle 10 times the software it's using. He wonders if Boléro could be waiting on the other side of his implant's 90% wasted capacity.

Another man, a conductor, also loves music. Trauma to his brain destroys his career, though his hearing is unaffected by the injury. The difference is this: now, the more exquisite the music, the more distressing it is for him to hear it. He describes it as too beautiful to bear. Four measures of Madame Butterfly make him nearly mad for the refuge of silence.

A woman who lives on a street abutting a city park complains to the police about the summer concerts piped into her home across the warm evenings.

'Mam, it's only an hour and a half every other week -- why don't you come out and enjoy the show?'

'You don't understand, I just can't stand music!'

'How can anyone hate music?' the concert planners mutter.

How can anybody love it so much it overloads his emotional receptors to the point of pain? How can a person need it so much, he beats at the gates of the tech gurus to learn their secrets?

The denouement of one man's cochlear odyssey is a recording, broadcast for the hearing public, of the music he imbibes with his new, vastly superior software upgrade. Pitch perfect, rhythm true, played by Schroeder on his toy piano -- by this diminutive Boléro the seeker is elated and reborn.

And lest we wax euphoric over miracles of science and the mind, we ponder this. A creature's testament to sculpted sound is richer than the bible, deeper than the River Styx, subtler than reason. Do you believe in god? Do you believe in music? Do you believe in haunted mansions? Do you believe at all?

Sanctified

I knew a man who felt he was a failure. He should have made a mark by now and here he was mid thirties, paying off his loans, chafing at his 9 to 5. He scorned stability like so much smut. Setting out to capture lost opportunity, hunter in a wild savanna, he thrashed through humans as through tall grasses, forgetting us as easily.

In a marshland near here, the cattails form a wide and tranquil unanimity in spring. You follow the wood walk to it's center to be swallowed up in a throaty lushness. By December, the boardwalk and walker are exposed, the stalks flattened in patterned chaos. Air marked by your breath echoes a silence only birds and distant cars embellish and you wonder at the choices of a lifetime.

The sameness of a stable life can groan against a writer's pure, clear sight and yet, one is not predictable, the other free. Chaos and serenity inhabit a bold anticipation, partners yearning for their opposites in timeworn visceral abandon.

Just US

Nana, who’s that lady comin’ up the sidewalk?

Oh that’s just somebody your uncle invited over to watch the game.

She got pretty hair.

I’m sure she does now Lucy don’t you be starin at her -- put the curtains back together.

What's that she got on her arm?

Honey, I don't have time right now, I'm fixin the nachos.

Pocketbook? Looks funny for a pocketbook.

Oh -- let me see -- no that's not a pocketbook, Lucy, it's a scale.

Like in the bathroom?

Not really -- it's more old fashioned. You see those two big platters? She can weigh two things out against each other on those.

Why?

I don't know why and you're askin too many questions. Now scoot.

....... . . . . . . .

Nana, uncle and his friends sent me to bring 'em some food.

Food? What do they think I'm doin in here, my nails? I'm gettin em food. Here, bring em in the Planters Delux.

How much do peanuts weigh?

Honey, you look on that jar and it'll tell you.

40 oz -- that's not enough.

Lucy, you try my patience to the moon -- not enough what?

They want heavier stuff.

Ohhh -- I got to stir this Velveeta or it'll scorch. Here, bring em in the Meat & Cheese Party Tray and some Nancy's Deli Spirals.

That's only 5 lbs plus 1.3 lbs -- I'll bring em the EZ Peel Shrimp too, 3 more lbs!

Lucy -- Lucy! I was not finished layin those out!

But uncle says bring in everything he got you from his club.

Lucy -- come back here... (that boy has never had an oz of sense in his body from the minute I borned him.)

Nana! Can I take the Belgian Mini Cream Puffs... and the Hillshire Farms Lit'l Smokies 5.5 lbs? And the Tyson Buffalo Hot wings brings it up to 9.5 lbs, and these Casa Di Bertacci Meatballs 6 lbs!

Lucinda -- what is going on in there? This is not normal.

Uncle's puttin this stuff on the lady's scale and everybody's laughin.

Oh that Samuel, never could hold his beer any length of time -- soon as I get this cheese warmed...

He's not holdin beer, Nana. He got a big bottle of that black stuff in his hand -- looks like motor oil.

Lucy, it is not motor oil, that's the prune juice. Your uncle's prone to blockage -- child, come back here with those Farm Rich Mozzarella Breaded Cheese Sticks!

4.5 lbs, Nana -- uncle says!

....... . . . . . . .


(winded) He says we need more.

What's all that hollerin -- they bettin on the game or what?

They're bettin on the lady.

The lady! Now this is getting ridiculous.

They're throwin money at her other plate, the one without the food, only it never sticks -- it flies back out. So now they're bettin how long she can hold up her scale all lopsided like that.

Lucy, tell your uncle when I get out there -- TAKE your hands off the Tostitos!

They want these Scoops and the Restaurant Style Pick 'n' Pack.

Now they're screamin like banshees. Poke your head out there and tell me -- who made the touchdown Lucy?

The lady, Nana, she's all crumpled over and Uncle's pilin the 50" HD Plasma TV and Panasonic DVD/VCR recorder on top of the 7 Layer Taco Dip (40 oz)!

You got that taco dip past me too?

Yes mam, when I grabbed the Mi Abuelo Fresh Salsa 48 oz.

Young lady -- !

Nana, we got to help her. She's bleeding.

Bleeding? All right honey, I'm hanging up my apron, look my hair is flyin every which way...

Hurry up, Nana, she's crying and they're laughing.

Lucy I am coming but you listen to me little girl, the lady is a full grown friend of your uncle's and if he asks her over to the Super Bowl I'm sure she can plainly see --

No she can't, Nana.

No she can't what?

She can't see.

What are you talking about sweetheart?

She's blind, Nana. Didn't I tell you? The lady's blind.

Murmers in their wings

Edwin Huizinga blogs from his tour with the Oberlin Orchestra in China:

While we play there is a constant hum from the audience that you can hear in the orchestra if there are really quite moments…they are whispering, asking questions to their neighbors, pointing, looking. It is an awesome experience for them. Some of them have never seen an orchestra perform before.

I have a theory about the audience that hums, literally or figuratively. Strangers become an audience when they trust their capacity for wonder. This is hard for people who are overloaded with opportunity. Their wonderment nerves are fried. It's not that they don't want to hum -- they really can't.

The Chinese listeners wonder so well, they have to ask. They nudge, they whisper, they hum themselves into an audience, they hum the musicians into an orchestra.

Enigma

Rapper 50 Cent:

I feel like a very attractive woman. A man becomes like an attractive woman when he's successful.

Thank you Mr. Cent you have just turned my wanton preconception of mankind's valuation of womankind on its head, not to mention my valuation of the machismo leanings of rap.

A very attractive woman knows her power. On a bad day she sends ripples of emotion, from reverence to envy, through the crowd. At her best, her face will launch a thousand ships. The twist for me is 50's choice of words. Beautiful praises attributes a woman's born with. Attractiveness is deeper. A woman captures my attention when she is in league with her creative spirit, with or without the accouterments of glamour. The very attractive woman (50 Cent may disagree) could be Mother Teresa emptying the bed pan, Judith Resnik in her jumpsuit, Whoopi Goldberg playing the skid row queen.

I'm not surprised the poet found this metaphor. I picture it sliding out of his subconscious in the heat of a press op. Women have more cultural license to lavish their attention on the so-called softer virtues -- spirituality, aesthetics, sensuality -- than do the stolid males. I wonder if the successful rapper, feeling like a very attractive human, knows this: it's the she wolf who personifies his freedom.